5Degrees: How To “Keep In Touch” In Just the Right Way

March 19, 2012

2:00 pm

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Do you have a pile of other people’s business cards that just sit around collecting dust? Maybe you’ve even forgotten who you wanted to reach out to. Sometimes meeting new people gets the best of us, and we either forget to reach out to the people we met or just don’t make time for it, despite our best intentions. After all, we are human.

But what if instead of collecting dust, we were instead easily turning new connections into valuable contacts to grow our existing network? The solution: 5Degrees, which was one of our showcased startups during our SXSW #StartupLife Celebration on March 10.

5Degrees (founded by Jeb Ory, Kilton Hopkins and Kelly Schwedland in Chicago) is a mobile relationship manager that solves your networking nightmare. By combining contacts (through your phone contact list and social networks), communications, and events within a single, simple to use mobile application, 5Degrees helps busy professionals manage their relationships while on the go.

While 5Degrees does have competitors like VIPOrbit, Smartr – Xobni, and Fellow-Up, 5Degrees does not require a third-party product for cloud sync, it permits interaction and meta-data with contacts, and also has a mobile-to-web platform. 5Degrees, like Evernote, also lets you take notes about the people you meet.

Note: 5Degrees is currently in beta and is working on adding premium features (e.g. integrating with additional social networks and other email clients). While 5Degrees has raised seed funding, it will be looking for additional funding in the latter part of this summer.